


It's the Best That I Can Do

by thought



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-13
Updated: 2015-03-13
Packaged: 2018-03-17 15:52:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3535238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thought/pseuds/thought
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone lives. Carolina returns to her childhood home. She takes Tex with her. Naturally, this goes fantastically.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's the Best That I Can Do

**Author's Note:**

> title from "Dear Sons and Daughters of Hungry Ghosts"

“I got a hand  
So I got a fist  
So I got a plan  
It's the best that I can do”

 

Carolina rents a car at the shuttle port, a sleek black thing that rushes over the busy Austin pavement like silk and crunches pleasantly over the graveled roads of the countryside. She drives with one hand on the wheel, the other arm stretched comfortably across the door just under the window, fingers drumming a casual beat along with the generic pop music and commercial jingles babbling lowly from the radio.

Tex hunches awkwardly in the passenger seat, shoulders stiff against the cushioned leather. Carolina had snatched her back pack away to toss in the trunk before they'd set out, and without it Tex's arms and hands shift aimlessly until they settle wrapped loosely across her front like she's hugging herself. It's a vulnerable position, like she's a sulky kid in the car with a distant adult acquaintance. Except, she reminds herself ruthlessly, she has never been a kid. Has no lived experience to legitimize the simile.

Carolina is comfortable out of armour, as graceful and poised in her own skin as in the artificial teal shell. She drives fast and a bit reckless and even leaned back into the molded leather and with the sun highlighting her hair in golden reds she is still possessed of a freeze-frame quality of potential action, always a hair trigger away from violence. Carolina is never truly at rest, she is just waiting.

Tex has been out of armour for seventy-three hours and still feels naked without it, has made a game of avoiding mirrors, sick of the tiny jolt of 'wrong' that tugs sideways at her gut whenever she catches a glimpse of her face. She's read the files. Done her research. She does not look like Allison Church. There's a passing resemblance, as if that of distantly removed cousins, and her hair is the same shade of blonde. But without the picture as reference no one would think to make a connection. Tex knows her own face, but there is still a faint stutter deep down in the shaky, recursive fragments of code that Alpha had generated as the base of her personality matrix that expects to see someone different when she looks in a mirror. It is, by all rights, an impossibility, her existence. She wonders, sometimes, how much of the Beta fragment was actually created by Alpha and how much was The Director's biased influences shaping her development. She can't think of herself as Beta. Isn't particularly interested in trying. The further she can get from Leonard Church’s influence, the better.

An hour out of the city Carolina turns the car down a tree-line drive, branches stretching overgrown and heavy across the wide path and blocking most of the sun but for a few shining rays that wind their way in through the foliage to puddle, lazy and hot on the gravel.

"This is it," Carolina says. "Home."

Ok, so maybe Tex isn't doing a great job at escaping Church's influence. Shut the fuck up.

The house is the sort of large and outdated that speaks to family money. Carolina uses an actual key to open the door, and there's a cloud of dust whipped up with every step they take across the polished wood of the entry way. The boards creek under her boots and she tucks her hands behind her back, tries to step softly. Carolina moves with brisk efficiency, opening windows in the large sunny kitchen, dragging dust sheets off of the chairs and tables in the narrow little living room. There's a door beside the staircase with an electronic lock, but Carolina shakes her head when Tex goes to open it.

"That's his office," she says. "Anything important in there the authorities have already gotten. I'm going to go turn the water on. Electric should be working, I called ahead to have someone out to hook it up last week."

Carolina goes outside and Tex leaves her backpack on the floor beside the uncomfortable looking sofa. Even with the windows open everything still smells like old wood and stale air. There's no breeze to circulate the air, and the heat weighs down on everything even inside out of the sun. She looks at the photos on the wall. The entire fucking point of the trip was masochism, really, on both of their parts. Might as well dive right in.

The first is of a much younger Leonard Church, all floppy hair and massive thick-rimmed glasses. He's standing with a group of six others in what looks like a truly shitty bar. There's not one of them who doesn't look deeply exhausted and moderately under-fed, but they're all grinning big and bright and stupid and Church is holding up a datapad above his head in victory. The next must be from Leonard and Allison's wedding, she in her dress uniform, he in an ill-fitting suit (sharp contrast to the perfectly tailored clothing he'd favoured in his later years). They're standing in front of the house, with one of the women from the first picture sitting next to two marines, also in uniform. The second marine is balancing a tiny blond baby on his knee. Whoever took the photo caught the moment as Leonard put the ring on Allison's finger, and they're heads are bent close together, her smirking and he glaring indignantly. It's clear they aren't paying attention to anyone but each other.

Tex makes herself study the photo like she'd study a target map. Absorb the details. Let them go. There is nothing familiar in the photo. She's glad. The rest are family photos, Leonard and Allison and tiny Carolina, sometimes with the two marines, sometimes with the woman from the first picture, once in a clearly posed and uncomfortable photo with a stern older couple who were clearly Leonard's parents. Carolina comes in when she's looking at this last.

"Christ," she says. "You know, I actually remember that? Grandfather hated that my father married a soldier, and grandpa always thought she was just trying to get his money. They never forgave him for it, actually, which seems even more ridiculous now. They should've waited a few more years until he really gave them something to hate him for."

"Did she?" Tex asks.

"What?"

"Did she marry him for the money?"

Carolina's gaze hardens. "No. She wasn't that kind of person."

Tex shrugs. "Ok. It's a legitimate question."

Carolina doesn't look like she agrees, but she doesn't say anything further on the matter. "I'm going to work on clearing out the upstairs today. The master bedroom is big enough for two --maybe the twins-- but neither of us took much with us when we left, so we're going to have to pack some boxes."

Tex follows Carolina upstairs, brushing the dust off the banister with the sleeve of her hoodie as she goes. Carolina's in denim shorts that leave the surgical scars on her legs and the muscles that work beneath on full display, and a crocheted teal tank top that York or Connie must've picked out for her. She's taken her shoes off at some point, and her bare feet pad soft and familiar on the thick carpet. She gives the bedroom door a quick jiggle before she opens it, automatic and easy, and Tex thinks her offer of a home for all of them while they get back on their feet is not entirely selfless.

Tex... should've expected it. More than anyone she knew Church's obsessive inability to let things go, but it still takes her off guard when Carolina swings open the closet door and half of the space is taken up with crisp uniforms and soft t-shirts and baggy shorts. There's a leather jacket hung at the front, and near the back a wrinkled pair of expensive dress pants and a plain black dress. Beside her Carolina exhales between her teeth.

"He couldn't even deal with her clothes," she says, and there's a cold sort of anger there that Tex doesn't want to touch.

Silently she starts folding Church's side of the closet into the large plastic bin Carolina had dragged in from the car. Worn-out dress clothes thirty years out-of-style, hoodies and t-shirts from various universities, a couple shirts with stupid sci-fi quotes across the chest in pealing iron-on lettering. Carolina moves through the other side of the closet fast, not looking at what she's doing. By the time Tex is done with Church's clothes Carolina's moved on to the dresser, her back turned. Tex lifts one of Allison's shirts from the top of the pile, turns away from Carolina to hold it up against herself quickly, just long enough to see how it would've been too small in the shoulders and hips, the neckline lower than she'd probably be comfortable with, the fabric strangely thin. She puts it back hurriedly, feels like she's done something fundamentally wrong; shameful.

Later, Carolina holds up the leather jacket. She's not looking directly at Tex, eyes focused somewhere over her shoulder. "Do you want this?" she asks shortly, like she's been preparing herself.

Tex doesn't flinch away, but that's mostly because months of watching the others flinch from The Director made her determined never to do it herself. "I'm not interested in wearing a dead woman's clothes, Carolina."

Carolina's jaw hardens. "I just thought you had a right--"

"No," Tex says. "You start thinking like that and you're just playing along with what he wanted to make me."

Carolina's shoulders jerk slightly. "Technically, he did make you."

"Don't argue semantics. As soon as he fragmented Beta I was as free from his influence as any of you."

Carolina doesn't look like she believes her, but she puts the jacket in the hall closet. Tex goes outside so she doesn't say something she'll regret later. The sun is inching its way down past the horizon, hazy yellows and oranges washing out over the dried up fields in the distance. The air hangs oppressive and still, the faint buzz of insects and the rush of traffic on the highway the only sounds.

She's angry at Carolina for not allowing her the separation from Church. Angry at herself for needing to wander through this museum of someone else's life just to reassure herself of the alien lack of familiarity. Thinks she should trust herself more than this, thinks if she wants Carolina to believe in her own agency and selfhood she needs to put a little more faith in it herself. She scuffs her boot through the dirt. She thinks about dying her hair. She wonders if her hair will even absorb dye. She looks to her left and sees an old chalkboard propped up against the side of the house with a pile of odds and ends that Carolina had been dragging out of the garage earlier. The chalk is faded and blurry, but she can see it was probably serving as some sort of score board, 'Leonard' and 'Allison' heading separate columns of numbers. There's a sloppy, childish heart drawn large at the top so it encompasses both names.

Tex goes inside, retrieves the pocket knife from her backpack. She stands across from the chalkboard and gathers her hair up in one fist, chopping away at it determinedly until everything below her chin falls away. She wants it shorter, but there’s only so much she can do with the knife. When she comes back inside, Carolina’s putting the jacket in her own backpack. She stares briefly at Tex’s hair, but doesn’t comment.

The wind picks up once the sun goes down. It gusts dust and dirt in through the open windows, coating the kitchen in a thin film of grey grime. Carolina closes the windows but chilly drafts still sneak through, and the wind rattles the glass furiously. Carolina unpacks the grocery bags from the car, and turns on the old music player on the sideboard. She slices cheese and bread and olives to old jazz turned up loud to combat the wind, drinks two glasses of red wine very quickly and lingers over the third. Tex goes through photo albums at the kitchen table, flipping faster and faster through the pages as the faces in the photos remain distant and meaningless and as she becomes more and more assured of her own disinterest. Carolina eats standing up, does not offer Tex anything. Tex can't tell if it's a kindness or a cruelty.

On her second bottle of wine Carolina's not drunk but she starts telling stories anyways. Outside it starts raining and Tex lets the low sharp cadence of Carolina's words blend in with the raindrops on the windows and the aggressively energetic unrelenting saxophone and drums. Carolina talks about how she loved and resented her mother in equal parts, how she didn't want to admit that anyone for a long time. How she hated her father, and how she still felt grateful to him for pushing her. How they'd been a team-- united in the selfish desire to be of more importance than the entire human race in the eyes of one woman. Tex doesn't want to know this. Tex has not earned this level of candor, but she feels trapped in the kitchen like it is a moment cut off from the rest of space and time until Carolina decides otherwise.

With the dregs of the third bottle Carolina looks at Tex straight on, leans in over the table, one hand coming to rest, covering a picture of Leonard and Carolina standing in front of an impeccably iced chocolate layer cake, not a speck of flour on either of them. "I hated you," she says.

Tex leans back, raises her eyebrows. "I'm not her. I thought we covered this."

Carolina waves her objection off irritably with the hand holding her wine glass. Her hands are narrow and strong, stem caught between long fingers with an unconscious elegance. "I know that. I'm talking about you."

"Ok," Tex says. "It's not exactly news."

Carolina glares. "I'm apologizing to you," she snaps. "Shut up."

Tex mimes zipping her lips. Carolina places her other hand on the table. She's taller than Tex like this, can look down on her. It doesn't actually bother Tex, because she's not that fucking insecure and she understands basic fucking body language enough to choose to ignore it.

"The Director played us against each other," Carolina says. "And you were fucking obliviously arrogant. But you were part of my team, and as such I had a responsibility to you. And that's what I'm sorry for. I didn't treat you like a member of my team, and everything else aside, that was unprofessional and an overall shitty thing to do to you."

Tex tries not to feel like she's just won something, but she has to admit privately that Carolina's acceptance as her CO, even retroactively, feels a hell of a lot better than the top spot on the leaderboard ever did. She says, "It's not like circumstances made it easy for you. The Director--"

"Don't make excuses for me," Carolina says sharply. "I'd been dealing with him my entire life, I should've recognized what he was doing. I wasn't a good team leader. That's on me."

Tex opens her mouth, shuts it. "I'm just gonna let your perfectionist issues have that one," she says. "You know you need like, years and years of therapy, right?"

"I went to therapy when I was younger," Carolina says easily. "I completed my twelve week session perfectly. It was very useful."

Tex stares. Carolina stares back. "I don't know if you're joking," Tex says. Carolina pushes back from the table, straightens up.

"I'm going to bed. There's a spare bedroom at the top of the stairs to the left."

"I don't sleep," Tex lies.

Carolina huffs out a breath. "Fine." She rinses the knife and the wine glass, turns off the music. Before she goes upstairs, she looks back at Tex and there's something softer in her gaze. "Don’t' spend all night looking at those," she says crisply, nodding to the photo albums. Tex nods back, and Carolina heads upstairs.

Tex closes the photo albums. She puts them back in the cupboard. Outside the rain gets harder. She wipes the dust off the counters and table, goes to put the corkscrew away. It hangs on a rack on the wall next to a battered old Swiss army knife with the initials AG carved into the handle.

Carolina comes back downstairs an hour later. She's wrapped in an ancient looking sweatshirt with some sort of red and green animal on the back and the words '2534/2535 track team'. Tex is standing at the window staring out into the darkness, trying to figure out if there's a way to slow her mind down without starting to lose consciousness. Carolina pours a glass of water and drinks it in slow measured sips staring at the photos on the living room wall.

"I'm going for a run," she says once the glass is empty.

"Don't get hit by lightning," Tex says.

"I'll do my best."

Tex sneaks upstairs while she's gone. Carolina's door is open, and she tries not to think about how she doesn't need to turn on the light to see everything. The quilt on the bed is that familiar shade of teal, what clutter on the desk there is made up of trophies and awards never taken out of their cases, a few half empty pill bottles, a dried up eyeliner pencil. There's a picture of Allison on the bookshelf, placed with careful precision in front of a small collection of political theory textbooks and a stack of well-worn paperbacks. The top one has a unicorn on the cover. Tex goes back downstairs and sits at the kitchen table with her boots up on the second chair and her datapad glowing dimly in the dark. She finishes the shitty mystery novel she'd been reading on the shuttle, does some comparisons on motorcycle makes and models for the bike she's planning to buy as soon as she's settled enough to have somewhere to park it. She does not reread the Project files from Freelancer.

When two hours have passed and Carolina’s still not back Tex goes to the front window to see if she's within eyesight. It takes a minute, but Tex spots her hunched down in the front seat of the car, head tipped to the side and resting against the glass of the window. She doesn't move for the ten minutes that Tex watches her, and she realizes that Carolina's fallen asleep in the rental car more easily than she fell asleep in her childhood bedroom.

Outside, lightning flashes nearby and thunder follows immediately on its heels. Tex stands at the window and swears she can feel eyes watching her from the photographs on the wall.

***

Carolina wakes up to the thunderclap of collapsing wood. It's still dark, light flickering through the windshield of the car where she's fallen asleep curled in the driver's seat. Her neck cracks sharp as she jerks upright, hand fumbling for a weapon that isn't there. Across the expanse of the dirt packed field the house is a ghostly outline, glimmers of light shining out between rough boards where there should only be darkness. The wind spits dead leaves across her field of blurry vision, dust and dirt rising and falling with the gusts.

Carolina throws herself out of the car, leaves the door swinging open behind her as she runs across the packed earth, gravel and twigs pressing through the thin soles of her sneakers. Tex is standing a little ways off, by one of the old oak trees. Her arms are wrapped around her stomach like she's holding her insides in place. Her hair, ends still jagged, whips around her face, highlighted in bright splashes of gold against the nighttime dark like a film reel struggling to stay in focus.

"What the fuck did you do?" Carolina demands over the leaves in the wind and the crackling flames, louder than she's ever thought fire could be. She has been raised at war. She should not be surprised by the alien heat at her back.

"It's a funeral pyre," Tex says, breathless and desperate. "They're all dead and nobody bothered to notice."

"That was my home," Carolina snarls.

"Bullshit! You were raised in a mausoleum, Carolina."

A spark lands on the back of her neck, right over the scar tissue. Carolina's hands are on Texas before she knows what she's doing, a fist in her hoodie and a hand at her throat, slamming her back against the tree. She goes easily. Carolina's fingers press down and the skin is cool but it gives like human flesh would, the fragile vulnerability of the wind pipe, the thin skin in the soft hollow of her throat. She wants to tear until she draws blood, wants to cut those roots out of Tex's heart like Tex has done to her in the snapping wood and thick smoke clawing its way down her throat and into her lungs.

She thinks of wires and a polymer composite and a metal skeleton with no heart beating inside the chest. There is no pulse under her thumb, but Tex is staring up at her anyway, head tipped back, throat exposed. This is not victory. Carolina thinks she comes from a family of robots, sucks in smoke and coughs hard until she can feel the pounding of her own blood in her cheeks and eardrums.

The firelight flickers weird, alien patterns across the darkness, illuminating the face beneath the messy blond hair in fits and starts and Carolina looks and sees a stranger, sees nothing familiar in the alien landscape of cheekbones and eyelashes. Her other hand lets go its hold on the worn fabric of Tex's coat and slips beneath the fabric to cup a solid shoulder, fingers splaying across shoulder blade and her thumb tucking into the dip above a collar bone. She trails fingers across a strong jaw. Looks down at the artificial thing in her hands and wants to scream when she looks back up like the only living thing remaining in the field. Behind Carolina the frame of the house gives way with a roar and she feels her own breath coming even and sharp in her lungs and doesn’t feel much else and in front of her Texas bares her throat like one final challenge.


End file.
